{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2019}} {{Use British English|date=June 2019}} '''Elizabeth Tollett''' (March 11, 1694 – February 1, 1754) was a British poet. Her surviving works are varied; she produced translations of classical themes, religious and philosophical poetry and poems arguing for women's involvement in education and intellectual pursuits such as natural philosophy.<ref name="fara" /> Unusually, for a woman of her time, her poetry also includes Newtonian imagery and ideas.<ref name="fara" /><ref name="orlando1" /><ref name="oxdnb" /> Some of her poetry imitates the Latin verse of Horace, Ovid, and Virgil.<ref name="oxdnb" /> In some of her poems, Tollett paraphrases the Psalms.<ref name="backs" />
She was the daughter of George Tollett who, observing her intelligence, gave her a thorough education in languages, history, poetry and mathematics. Tollett was fluent in Italian, and French and she achieved a proficiency in Latin that was unconventional for women of her time.<ref name="fara" /> The Tolletts' social circle included Isaac Newton, who also encouraged her to pursue her education.<ref name="oxdnb" /><ref name="backs" />
Tollett grew up in the Tower of London where her father lived as a commissioner of the British Navy.<ref name="backs" /> She refers to the Tower in several of her poems and expresses her confinement and frustration with it.<ref name="fara" /><ref name="backs" /> Tollett remained unmarried her whole life.<ref name="fara" /><ref name="oxdnb" /> Her mother likely died while she was young and Tollett, being the eldest daughter, would have been expected to stay at home and care for her siblings.<ref name="fara" />
In 1724 she published ''Poems on Several Occasions'', which included her ''Hypatia'', now seen as a feminist protest poem.<ref name="backs" />
On Newton's death in 1727 Tollett produced an elegy, ''On the Death of Sir Isaac Newton''.<ref name="fara" />
She died in 1754 in the village of Westham, Essex (now known as West Ham) and is buried at All Saints church there.<ref name="oxdnb" />
== References == <references>
<ref name="oxdnb"> {{cite book |last=Londry |first=Michael |title=Tollett, Elizabeth (1694–1754) |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=September 2004 |volume=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |accessdate=2009-10-17 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27502}} (library card access). {{DNBfirst|wstitle=Tollett, Elizabeth}}</ref>
<ref name="orlando1"> {{cite news |url=http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=tollel |title=Elizabeth Tollett; Overview screen |last1=Brown |first1=Susan |last2=Clements |first2=Patricia |last3=Grundy |first3=Isobel |work=The Orlando Project |accessdate=2009-10-18}} </ref>
<ref name="fara">{{cite journal|last=Fara |first=Patricia |date=June 2002 |title=Elizabeth Tollett: A New Newtonian Woman |journal=History of Science |publisher=Science History Publications Ltd |volume=40, part 2 |issue=128 |pages=169–187 |doi=10.1177/007327530204000203 |bibcode=2002HisSc..40..169F |s2cid=159865038 |url=http://www.shpltd.co.uk/fara-elizabeth-tollet.pdf |accessdate=2009-10-18 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070801175341/http://www.shpltd.co.uk/fara-elizabeth-tollet.pdf |archivedate=1 August 2007}} </ref>
<ref name="backs"> {{cite book |last=Backscheider |first=Paula R. |title=Eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry: inventing agency, inventing genre|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |year=2005 |pages=411 |isbn=0-8018-8169-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kRVSnAqeKBoC&pg=PA411}}</ref>
</references>
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tollet, Elizabeth}} Category:English women poets Category:1694 births Category:1754 deaths Category:18th-century English women writers Category:18th-century British poets